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I purchased this dvr after having one just like it that has a smaller hard drive (250 gb vs. 1 tb). This is a very stable and silent dvr. Like most, I guess. I like the 3 hour and the 150 minute varible bit rate recording features. When I initially read (over 50 reviews from customers) about these dvrs, I never got a clear idea if they had a vbr recording setting because none of them indicated it in their reviews. When I found out that they have the vbr recording, I was happy. These are the following settings that this dvr has (from best to least-best): HQ (XP, 1 hour); High Speed VBR (61 minutes to approximately, 68 minutes); SP (2 hours); SPP VBR (150 minutes); LP VBR (3 hours); EP (4 hours); SLP (6 hours); SEP (8 hours). That "High Speed", VBR setting works great. For example: If you have a recording that's 65 minutes long, instead of editing it down to 60 minutes (and using the HQ speed) or using the SP speed, you can choose the high speed setting, then it will record the 65 minutes at a vbr to the disc and fit the whole program on the disc at high quality at a high speed. The "down-side" to recording a disc at a fast speed is that it may not last for more than 5 years. Or it may last, these days. However, I take the disc and immediately make a copy of the disc at a slow speed (preferably, 2X) on my computer. I dislike a few things about this dvr: It only records about 18 programs at a time; Extremely long finalize time; VOB files are interlaced, so there is no extracting any full program from a disc recorded on this unit; It will not display any Comcast Cable channels without their cable box. Overall, this is a very good dvr that I would purchase again.Read full review
I bought this unit primarily to use with over-the-air digital signals. I don't have cable or satellite TV hookups in my system. My problem was I was unable to route digital signals from my antenna to my hi-def projector. To do that, I needed a high-def tuner that is able to receive over-the-air signals and pass those signals along to my projector. My other problem was trying to record digital signals on a VCR. It can be done, but it is complicated and I kept missing shows because I had forgotten to set the digital-to-analog converter to the right channel, or I had forgotten to turn it on. Since digital tuners that do what I needed tend to be way more expensive than they have any right to be, and they still would not solve my vexing VCR problems, I decided to go with a Tivo-like product. After doing a lot of research, I decided on this Magnavox product, which I guess is actually manufactured by Funai. I did not like paying as much for it as I did, but I am sure glad I bought it. It solved both the problems listed above and it also allowed me to do other things I couldn't do before, like convert old video tapes to DVD. It also allows me to record a TV show directly to a DVD, or to dub a show from the unit's internal hard drive to a DVD. It also allows video editing and it converts analog audio signals to Dolby digital signals. The video quality isn't quite as good as straight hi-def. I tried both the RGB and YCbCr settings, and to my eyes, RGB looks a little bit better. In either setting, the picture seems to be a little washed out and not quite as sharp compared to straight hi-def. The unit also allows you to toggle between 480p, 720p and 1080i or 1080p settings for any signal, recorded or live, analog or digital. Of course, you can only push an analog signal so far when doing this upconversion (I still get old 480i live over-the-air signals where I live). The upconversion works well on my projector because it has a wide range of picture format options. There is a lot less flexibility when it comes to my Vizio E420VL hi-def TV because it has only a few picture format options. For instance, if you use the zoom option, you may lose a lot of the picture, which gets pushed off the edges of the viewable area. If you convert an over-the-air 480i signal to 720p, you get a picture that is distored because the aspect ratio cannot be made to fit the screen on the Vizio. The same signal can be made to work on my Infocus IN76 projecor, because it has a control to restore the 4:3 aspect ratio of the original signal that the Vizio TV doesn't have. The other curious thing that happened in my setup is that the 1080p option is not available when I feed the signal through my four-way (two inputs and two outputs) HDMI switch. The DVR gives me the 1080p option when I plug it directly into the TV or the projector, but only the 1080i option when the same signal goes through the switch. According to what I've read, this HDMI switch problem is not unique. Sometimes HDMI switches interfere with some audio and video component functions. I did not find this unit very hard to use, but it does have some quirks, like the odd way it treats left over space on a DVD. It also doesn't list days of the week in some parts of the recording timer, only numbers, so you need a calendar sometimes to make a recording very far in advance. Contrary to some reports, I found it quite easy to "finalize" DVDs.Read full review
Works well and been used a lot. I have the exact model for the past 6 years and needed to take I down to replace a noisy fan so this one works well for a backup and or secondary for my 30 inch computer monitors that I use for both computer and tv viewing. Excellent no problems with about 300 hours of use since I received it.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
I replaced a DVD recorder connected to my antenna. The refurbished unit showed some use on the remote but otherwise was like new. The DVD recorder is less versatile than my old one (i.e. this only records "video" format, not "VR") but that's not a big thing, and anyway, the hard drive is my day-to-day medium for recording. I get excellent reception on the receiver. Programming is straight-forward. One little glitch on setup: until I set the unit's parameter to use HDMI for output, I kept getting locked up running through HDMI to the TV...I got past that, then things were fine. All in all, a great upgrade for my antenna-based TV system.
I have a history with these products from Magnavox. I already owned the previous generation 513H version, and had enjoyed its capabilities for some time. I then bought a new generation with the 1T hard drive as a backup unit. When my original 513H died and would not come on, I bought this 533H to replace it. These units give me a lot of flexibility for recording and editing shows and other videos. It works great to record to the hard drive, edit down to exactly what I want, and then burn to DVD. I'll always make sure I have one or more of these for accomplishing my video tasks.
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